Logistics procurement platform Shipsta says demand for digital freight procurement technologies has risen sharply amid historic levels of disruption and volatility. Data-driven logistics procurement platform Shipsta has seen inbound sales enquiries rise 75% quarter-on-quarter as shippers look to digital technologies to help manage rising freight costs.
The company said it was also seeing “greater urgency and shortening sales cycles as shippers prepare for problems in freight tendering as a result of historic levels of disruption and volatility”.
Shipsta’s founder and CEO Christian Wilhelm, who previously worked as the Global Logistics Partner Manager at Kuehne + Nagel, commented: “We are seeing much greater urgency from logistics teams as they seek to avoid major bottlenecks in their internal sourcing and procurement process. Even for the largest enterprise customers we’ve seen sales cycles shorten to less than three months.”
The company said that amid a shortage of capacity and elevated shipping rates, many businesses have postponed tender activity while they focus on spot buying. But it said “logistics teams are likely to come under extreme pressure when tender activity is resumed due to the reliance on manual processes and the need to procure and compare rates from a larger number of carriers in order to control costs”.
It observed that with much of the logistics industry still working offline on spreadsheets, the process of comparing freight rates – with complex rate structures and hundreds, or even thousands, of shipping lanes – “is a slow, fragmented and onerous task”. In contrast, it claims Shipsta’s end-to-end platform connects shippers and carriers “to ensure a frictionless procurement process for spot and contract buying, entirely online”.
Thomas Mielke, CEO at logistics consultants Metroplan Process Management, commented: “In this climate, businesses need agility, which means digital processes and complete transparency of data. The technology available today is more advanced, more specialized and more accessible so there is little reason to delay.
“The traditional tendering process is looking increasingly antiquated and, frankly, is no longer fit for purpose. Those that depend on manual processes face an Excel tsunami when tender activity is resumed, with a massive loss of efficiency and unnecessary costs. comments.”
Shipsta’s digital platform allows procurement managers to create, amalgamate and analyse tenders from hundreds of carriers in minutes instead of days. It also integrates long-term contracts and short-term spot orders – for air, sea and land freight – all on the same platform. Founded in 2015, the company has a customer base that includes some of the largest businesses in the chemicals, pharmaceuticals and automotive industries.
David Waroquier, operating partner at Mangrove Capital Partners, an investor in Shipsta, commented: “There is a huge opportunity to boost productivity, increase efficiency and give companies significantly better visibility and forecasting ability, in a time where multi-tier supply chains and agility are becoming the new norm.”
Source: Lloyd’s
